Burundi - Working conditions

In 1998, the minimum wage in Burundi for urban areas was US$0.37 a day
and $0.24 a day for the rest of the country; this represents a
considerable decline from the 1994 minimum wage of $0.63 and $0.42
respectively. Considering that inflation, nation-wide instability, and
the economic embargo led to a dramatic price increase of consumer goods
throughout the late 1990s, the decline of the minimum wage over the same
period meant that Burundi's 4 million workers were having to pay
more to survive with reduced means to do so. The very low level of
organization and influence of trade unions and their division along
ethnic and religious grounds meant that Burundi's workers lacked
a sufficient mechanism to assert their rights against declining pay and
poor working conditions.

The rate of illiteracy in Burundi gradually improved through the 1980s
and 1990s. In 1985 illiteracy amongst the population aged 15 and above
was 68 percent. By 1997 this had been reduced to 55 percent, but this
was still 13 percent below the African average. This level of illiteracy
worsened due to the civil war, which helped to reduce the level of
primary school enrollment from 73 percent in 1990 to 54.2 percent in
1998. In addition, it will be difficult for a government with such
limited revenue to provide sufficient education and vocational training
for the large number of Burundi's youth. This has significant
implications for the country's economic development as the labor
force remains generally unskilled. The problem of an unskilled workforce
will be accentuated by the AIDS epidemic, which hits the mature working
sector the hardest.